Let’s Wrap Things Up
Hello, dear friends! Welcome to May! School-based SLPs, we’ve nearly made it!!!
From My Desk
I come to you from a whirlwind of birthdays and meetings and evaluations and thoughts and sleepy eyes. In my family, we jokingly refer to April/May as “birthday month,” as there are four in rapid succession (including mine and my husband’s). As I write this, we’ve only my husband’s left. I’m exceedingly sleepy and have reached the point in the year where I’m forgetting things left and right, relying even more heavily than ever on my calendar and check lists and praying to the gods of the end of the school year that I haven’t forgotten to add anything to them…
Month’s Most Used Therapy Materials
Does the CASL count?
Seriously though, I feel like I’ve done more evaluating than treating this month. My schools have been completing end-of-year state testing, which means a lot of missed therapy sessions. Additionally, I’ve been helping some of the elementary SLPs in my company with end-of-year evaluations, so the CASL has been in a constant state of use this month.
I have been delighting in the Kitty and Dragon book series on Epic! though! Even for my middle schoolers, it’s been such a great mid-level book for working on comprehension and retell at the end of the year. Long enough to be a bit of a challenge, very narrative in nature for story elements, but fun and sweet enough to not be overwhelming amid all of the other things going on at the end of the year.
I’ve also been following up on my previously used semantic feature analysis grids with semantic questioning during therapy sessions. After
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
Plans for Next Month
Finish the school year! There are a few admin types of things that I’m doing here at the end of the year:
Reviewing my Medicaid documentation to make sure I’ve logged all therapy dates and making note of any students who may need make up sessions
Updating my caseload information and compiling a list of students who will receive speech next year with notes for the next SLP
Checking current goals to see if any need to be updated before the next school year
Checking for IEPs and eligibilities that will happen in the first 2-3 months of school
Reviewing my list of evaluations for the year and making sure I’ve uploaded all documents into our software
Looking at the list of upcoming middle schoolers so that I can spend some time over the summer researching any areas new to me
What’s Giving Me Life
Honoring boundaries and taking a break. We’ve been hosting two weekly events every week for a while now and about halfway through April we decided to take a break for a few weeks. Some nights we’ve turned into complete hermits, other nights we’ve felt free to go to baseball games or movies or have random date nights. The freedom has been immensely beneficial!
My Ben’s Cookies copycat recipe. I’ve been missing England lately (as tends to happen when I’ve been away for more than a year or so), but being able to make something similar to a Ben’s Cookie has been helpful at keeping the despair (jk) at bay.
Having fun with clothes. Yes, in spite of my challenge, which I’ll update again soon. This month saw the spontaneous purchase of a couple pairs of pants from a local store that I love. They’re quite out of my normal comfort zone, but I’ve been absolutely loving them. It’s made me feel like I can have fun with my clothes again, while still having a small wardrobe and minimal decisions. And that was the whole goal of the jumpsuit challenge! I also got my ears repierced this weekend and I’m really loving having earrings again. I can’t wait to change them out and experiment with some fun ones!
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
This will probably be my last “school-related” newsletter for the school year. For the next few months, I’ll continue writing monthly but things we’ll look a little bit different for summer. Stay tuned and finish strong!
Christin
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